


The Second Verse

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftermath, Ancestors, Gen, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In retrospect, you should have seen this coming a long, long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Verse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [watchfob](https://archiveofourown.org/users/watchfob/gifts).



You’ve all been speeding and bouncing through the stars for more than a perigree and the patch on the roof still hasn’t stopped filling your nose with berry-blue. The coolkid said a while ago that the stain had faded, but you suspect he is fucking with you! He is not a quick learner. On the other hand, sometimes smells linger longer than the actual colors, especially when there is dust. It doesn’t do to filter evidence to reach a conclusion. It doesn’t.

You grip the head of your cane, let the ridges and edges dig into your fingers, into your palm. It hurts a little. You sit, still holding onto it.

You can smell the stars around you, long and streaky; they smell sort of like very concentrated steam, actually! Or whipped cream, which you have not had in a long time because it tastes bland and nasty, but you kept some in your hive to make entertaining foam at the mouths of scalemates who were sentenced to poisoning. It was part of the spoils of a FLARP game.

What was in your hive that didn’t have anything to do with roleplaying somehow, anyway? Not very much! You trace your fingers across the ashy-smelling rock underneath you and you sigh. The only interesting color up here is the berry, now, and the dull background chemical green that might have been interesting once but is now utterly, utterly, utterly dull. If you never smell that weird chemical smell again it will be too soon.

You can still remember all the smells of your hive (you can’t really remember how it _looked_ , though, which is troubling. That wasn’t a sweep and half ago.) It smelled like a fruit salad or a candied dessert, depending on how dusty you let it get, and like all the trees outside – they smelled in color like they smelled for real, which most things didn’t – and you kept the lights bright so the colors would contrast well enough to make sure you never stepped on anything, and you could still always find all your extra husktop disks and your fiddly little trophies and the box of roleplaying outfits.

Most of them will probably not fit you anymore, you realize, although most of them probably haven’t fit you in at least a sweep! You never really tried them on, but you had to get Kanaya to let out your Redglare outfit three times, so the ones you wore before that will almost certainly be too tight and too short in all the sleeves and not accommodate the funny beginnings of your breasts at all. (You can barely even see the things, so you don’t understand why they make so many shirts uncomfortable! It is stupid.) You and Vriska used to change your FLARP outfits with every game, piece them together from a whole pile of clothes – shirts and belts and hats and vests and a couple of skirts for special tricks and some _really excellent_ boots and a lot of gloves, and some jewelry for decoration. You always argued with Vriska about how many buckles she was allowed to have – eight is a silly-looking number of buckles in most combinations! – and there was one perfectly worn vest with lots of pockets that you traded off because otherwise you always fought over it.

You haven’t worn any of it in a long time. One night you woke up soaked and groggy with an empty pitcher in your hand, and saw your husktop screen flashing – Trollian, deep blue. You probably still have the conversation logs somewhere.

 **  
AG: Heeeeeeeeey!  
AG: *Heeeeeeeey!  
AG: Terezi  
AG: T8r8zi  
AG: T8r8ziiiiiiii   
GC: DID YOU JUST MIND-CONTROL ME?   
AG: Jeeeeeeez, calm down!  
AG: It was only a little bit.  
AG: *8it  
AG: I could have done 8 on my own if I’d just 8een there!!!!!!!!   
GC: IS YOUR KEYBOARD BROKEN?   
AG: Wh8t?   
GC: YOUR EIGHTS! >:?   
AG: Th8t is wh8t I wanted to talk to you a8out!  
AG: Guess wh8t?   
GC: I ALREADY GUESSED!  
GC: THAT COUNTS   
AG: Guess ag8n!   
GC: IT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT >:[  
GC: I WAS UP LATE PLOTTING!   
AG: Fiiiiiiiine ;;;;P  
AG: I  
AG: f8nd  
AG: ........  
AG: ................  
AG: ........................  
AG: ................................   
GC: SPIT IT OUT! >:[   
AG: my ancestor’s diary!!!!!!!!   
GC: REALLY?   
AG: Duh!!!!!!!!  
AG: That’s why all the 8s!!!!!!!!  
AG: She uses them for b’s and for things that sound like 8!  
AG: It’s the COOLEST THING. The COOLEST.   
GC: NOTHING IN MY NAME SOUNDS ANYTHING LIKE EIGHT.   
AG: 8luh 8luh 8luh.  
AG: Fiiiiiiiine.  
AG: Wh8tever.   
GC: THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE EIGHT EITHER!   
AG: 8luh 8luh!  
AG: You’re just jealous 8ecause youuuuuuu don’t have a cool typing p8tern!   
GC: I WILL FIND ONE.   
AG: Well, duh!  
AG: But you’re jealous 8ecause I picked one first!   
GC: SHUT UP.   
AG: 8ut I had to tell you about something else first!  
AG: I’m looking through 8its of the diary and guess what I saw?   
GC: WHAT?!   
AG: I saw somebody I 8et is  
AG: ........   
GC: IF YOU DO THAT AGAIN I WILL PUT BEETLES IN ALL YOUR HATS   
AG: Fiiiiiiiine.  
AG: She’s YOUR ancestor!  
AG: Or at least, that’s what I 8et.  
AG: And I don’t lose 8ets!   
GC: OF COURSE YOU DON'T, DUH.  
GC: WHAT WAS SHE LIKE?   
AG: I haven’t read all of it y8, dummy!  
AG: 8ut Mindfang thought she was awesome!  
AG: That’s her name, Mindfang. It’s the coolest name. The coolest!  
AG: Only I think they were enemies ::::(   
GC: WERE THEY KISMESES?   
AG: I don’t know yet!!!!!!!!  
AG: These things t8 time.  
AG: She had another kismesis, I think – he might 8e Fish8oy’s ancestor.   
GC: THIS IS A LOT OF ANCESTORS!   
AG: Wh8, do you think I’m lying?!   
GC: WELL, ARE YOU?   
AG: No!!!!!!!!  
AG: Not about this!  
AG: Jeeeeeeeez!  
AG: We’re sisters, dumbass!!!!!!!!  
AG: I wouldn’t lie about something this big!  
AG: *8ig.   
GC: OKAY.  
GC: I BELIEVE YOU! >:]  
GC: BUT THAT IS STILL A LOT OF ANCESTORS.   
AG: Yeah, I know!  
AG: It must mean we’re meant to 8e partners.   
GC: DIDN’T YOU SAY THEY WERE ENEMIES?   
AG: Well....  
AG: 8ut Mindfang said she th8t they could have been gr8 working together!  
AG: So it’s like a second chance! ::::D   
GC: REALLY?  
GC: WELL  
GC: I FORGIVE YOU FOR WAKING ME UP.   
AG: I toooooooold you!  
AG: I’ll tell you everything when I read more of 8t.  
AG: This proves it. We’re gonna be so gr8!   
GC: OF COURSE WE ARE, DUMBASS >:D   
**

In the present, on the asteroid, you close out of the log. Your throat feels strange, hot and heavy and uncomfortable, like someone has force-fed you some stew that was very badly cooked and now you are choking on a lump. Treachery on the part of your body! (This sort of thing has been happening a lot lately. You are tired of it.) You had forgotten most of that conversation. You sort of wish you had not been reminded.

The asteroid is dusty underneath your palms. You rub them along your pants – which are your ordinary pants, now; you do not want to wear your Redglare outfit right now – and sniff through your sylladex, because the asteroid is still very, very boring and it does not change out here at all. You flip past the heavy-feeling card three times without even scratching it. It shouldn’t be heavier! But it feels that way, your hands insist to you it does, and you are done with ignoring evidence and testimony! Done forever. Just because you end up at the right conclusion – and you did! you absolutely did! even Kanaya didn’t blame you! – doesn’t mean you will get lucky a second time.

“Luck doesn’t –” you start to remind yourself, but your traitor throat doesn’t let you. Stupid body! This is bullshit.

Angrily, you grab for the stupid card, rake your finger along it. It smells like blueberry too, but stale, and it also smells like paper. Mostly, it smells _nasty,_ but you have sort of gotten used to it. The pages you want are easy to find, marked with a bit of paper folded into an eight-petal flower. You know how to do it – it was an excellent way to take up time while on lookout in campaigns! – and you know the arrangement of the petals easily without needing to run your fingers over it: four on the bottom, three in the middle, one little one poking up out of the top. Maybe you will make some more. It isn’t as if there’s much else to do.

You read the bit about the trial and the hanging over again. And again. You wonder how long it was before Vriska read the whole of it. She never told you about it, even though, thinking about it, you don’t think she ever actually _lied_ to you about it either. She didn’t really lie to you very much at all, according to her – she kept inventing ways to hide things without lying. She taught you some of them, too; Karkat hasn’t caught on yet, although you think the coolkid might soon.

“Sorry,” you tell the berry spot on the roof, very very quietly. You sniff at the dust and find that you have drawn two S’s.

You wish the rest of Alternia was still alive, with the mother grub and all her waiting leftover genetics. Redglare and Mindfang must have had some more material left in there someplace. Maybe they would have had another two descendants.


End file.
